Where Europeans and Indigenous peoples first encountered each other, they fought over land and resources—and women. On many frontiers, or what I call “marital middle grounds,” settlers negotiated the novel marriage practices they encountered. By respecting local marriage protocols, white frontiersmen avoided violence and gained access to the local political, economic, and environmental knowledge networks needed to sustain themselves on unfamiliar land.
Yet, for colonial elites, such relationships threatened to disrupt what they hoped would be a forward expansion of the frontier. Indigenous peoples’ marriage systems allowed for the “uncivilized” practices they rejected, such as inheriting land and property through the female line and polygamy. Settlers and their new families integrated into worlds where Indigenous rights still mattered. However, the enforcement of its own legal and cultural system was fundamental to colonial power.